


make the yuletide gay

by cori_the_bloody



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Buffyverse Femslash Secret Santa 2017, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/F, Two Shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 16:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12963483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: “Right,” Faith says, rubbing at the back of her neck. “I’ll just get outta your guy’s hair. I don’t want to ruin the holiday.”Buffy’s stomach sinks at the defeated tone in Faith’s voice. She grabs onto her wrist just as she’s turning for the door.“Why not stay?”





	make the yuletide gay

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [Buffyverse Femslash Secret Santa](http://buffyfemslash.tumblr.com/tagged/secret-santa-2017) exchange. It fills the prompt "cozy/warm/fluffy Faith/Buffy" but was also influenced by a suggestion I received from [bisummers](http://bisummers.tumblr.com/): Buffy explains to Faith what happened after she saved Angel's life/makes leaving up to her.
> 
> This story is unbeta'd and takes place post-Amends. Merry Christmas, [matrya](http://matrya.tumblr.com/)! I promise chapter 2 will contain Even More fluff.

Buffy pauses on the porch, wiping at the fresh tears trailing down her face.

Angel’s safe at his place—blessedly a long way from being a pile of dust—but the whiplash of the last couple days seems to be catching up with her. Christmases have historically been a time of high tension in the broken Summers’ family, but between steamy dreams that’ve left her feeling unsatisfied in a major way and her showdown-slash-pep talk with Angel, Buffy feels like her life’s taking a real crack at redefining what it means to have the holiday blues.

She needs a nap…that lasts till the New Year.

After taking a second to make sure she’s ready to face her mom, she rubs the last of the tears out of her eyes and fumbles with her keys.

As she’s about to jam the key into the lock, the door flies open. Buffy lets out an undignified yelp and then presses her palm into her chest.

“Sorry,” Faith says, though her amused grin takes some of the sincerity out of the apology. Still, she lowers the broadsword she’d been holding over her head and steps aside to let Buffy in. “I heard a noise and I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“You know a lot of demons that have keys to my house?” Buffy asks. “Or wander around just before sunrise?”

Faith shrugs shamelessly. “You asked me to protect your mom. I’m just followin’ orders, alright?”

Buffy shakes her head and shrugs out of her coat, standing on tip-toes to hang it up in the foyer. “Since when do you put much stock in orders?”

“Since Joyce is the nice lady who invited me over. I owe it to her to keep her safe.”

Buffy takes a second with her back turned to frown. Her mom did take her on a massive guilt trip to make sure she asked Faith to Christmas Eve dinner, it was true, but that didn’t mean Buffy wasn’t sincerely happy to have Faith there. Faith knew that, right?

“I meant what I said, you know.”

“About explaining?” Faith asks, her face brightening almost comically. “Good, I’ve been dyin’ to know what happened. Since you’re not something I can kill, I gotta get my fill of demon-slaying action somehow.”

“Boy, you’re sure making with the warm welcome,” Buffy says, quirking an eyebrow.

Faith juts her chin out. “You are gonna give me the blow-by-blow, right?”

“It’s not quite as action-packed as your imagining, but, yeah, I’ll fill you in.” Faith nods approvingly, and Buffy considers dropping it. But the infinitesimal tug in her gut is enough to get her clearing her throat. “That actually wasn’t what I was referring to, though, about meaning what I said—I’m glad you came, Faith. Really. It’s good to have you here.”

Faith’s eyes widen and then she ducks her head, tapping the blade of her sword against her stockinged feet. “Oh. Cool. Thanks.”

Buffy feels a blush creep up into her cheeks and reaches up to fuss with her bangs, just for something to do. “Is, um, my mom up?”

Faith, still looking at her feet, shakes her head. “Haven’t heard any bangin’ around upstairs.”

Buffy heaves and sigh of relief, slides past Faith, and bounds up the first couple steps. “Oh, good. That probably means there’s time for some sleep before our Christmas breakfast smorgasbord.”

Buffy’s stomach growls at the thought, but a huge yawn is quick to follow.

Yup, it’s definitely naptime.

“Right,” Faith says, rubbing at the back of her neck. “I’ll just get outta your guy’s hair. I don’t want to ruin the holiday.”

Buffy’s stomach sinks at the defeated tone in Faith’s voice. She grabs onto her wrist just as she’s turning for the door.

“Why not stay?” she asks.

Faith pulls a face. “I don’t wanna be third-wheelin’ the mother-daughter fun, alright? I got cable and twinkly lights at home—that’s about all the Christmas cheer I can handle, anyway.”

“Suit yourself,” Buffy says, letting go. When Faith’s at the door, though, she adds, “But I meant it when I said we’re gonna have a smorgasbord for breakfast. There’s no way Mom and I can eat all the food we got by ourselves.”

“You don’t think Joyce’d mind?” Faith asks after a moment of consideration.

“I think she’d be offended if you left now, especially without giving her the chance to say goodbye.”

“Maybe I could stay.” Faith says it like she’s doing Buffy a favor. Buffy tries not to grin. “But just for breakfast.”

“Right,” Buffy says. “You’ll be gone before the scrambled eggs have gone cold.”

###

It’s late afternoon when Buffy wakes up, feeling more-or-less rested and ready to try on all her new Christmas clothes.

She ambles downstairs. “Who’s ready for a fashion show?”

Faith comes out of the kitchen, a plate of sugar cookies in her hand.

“Is torture a Christmas tradition I wasn’t familiar with?” she asks. “Because that’s what a fashion show sounds like to me.”

Buffy looks her over. While she’d been asleep, her mom had apparently lent Faith some fresh clothes to change into: black slacks and a Christmas-themed cardigan with a bunch of puffy, three-dimensional wreaths on it. She can’t help the smile that overtakes her.

“Oh, my god.”

“Shut up,” Faith demands.

“You’re gonna try on your clothes for us, Buffy?” Joyce asks, joining them in the foyer.

“Please tell me you have photographic evidence of Faith in that sweater,” Buffy says instead of answering her question.

Faith flips her off, and Joyce clucks her tongue. “Don’t make me separate you girls.”

“Hey, if it means I get to miss out on the never-ending parade of cheetah-print jackets, I don’t think I’d mind being put in a timeout.”

“You love that I can pull off cheetah-print. Admit it,” Buffy says, snatching a cookie from Faith. “You think I look hot.”

“You guys are going to spoil your dinner,” Joyce says, taking the plate and shaking her head as she walks away toward the kitchen.

“I think the fact that you’re hot makes you look hot,” Faith says. “Ain’t got anything to do with the cheetah print.”

Buffy raises her eyebrows, feeling a pleasant twist in her stomach.

Faith shoves Buffy’s shoulder and walks past her to the living room. “Oh, like you don’t already know it.”

“Never hurts to hear it though,” Buffy says, following her with a grin.

“Amen, sister.”

“Hey, Faith.”

She whirls around, one perfect eyebrow arched. “What?”

“You look cute in that sweater…I mean, it helps that you’re already cute. But with the sweater it’s like cute to the power of adorable.”

“Call me adorable again and you’ll earn yourself a thrashin’,” she replies, but there’s a pleased blush rising in her cheeks.

###

They head out for patrol late that night, after Joyce is in bed.

Though the temperature had been on the rise throughout the day, much of the snow remains on the ground, making the night seem quieter than usual. Like Buffy and Faith have the whole world to themselves.

Maybe that’s the reason Buffy finally works up the courage to say, “I’m sorry I lied.”

Faith shoots her a confused look, twisting her hands around the hilt of the broadsword.

“About Angel not being around,” she clarifies. “When you asked about him.”

Faith shrugs. “Water under the bridge or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Buffy agrees, but neither of them is convinced.

“Look,” Faith says, “I guess I get that you were still fucked up over it. But, I don’t know, maybe it’s stupid, but I shared some gory details about my shit with you. It woulda been cool if you’d thrown me a bone.”

Buffy nods, her brow furrowing. “That’s not stupid.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Faith says sarcastically.

Rolling her eyes, Buffy continues. “It’s _not_ stupid…but the whole share my pain thing—especially with Angel. It doesn’t exactly come naturally.”

“Okay,” Faith says. “I respect that.”

“Thank you.”

“So you brought it up just to apologize?” Faith asks, knocking her shoulder into Buffy’s. “You’re not gonna give me the deets from last night’s disaster.”

“No, I am.” She hesitates. “It’s just. I don’t think I know how to bring someone in at the last page. You’re missing most of the story.”

“The last page?” Faith questions. “As in, the end?”

Buffy sighs, frustrated.

“Okay, okay: how ‘bout I tell you what I already know and then you can fill in the blanks,” Faith says, kicking up some snow with her boots. She’s still wearing Joyce’s trousers, but Buffy resists the urge to tell her to watch the mud. It’s not like her mom isn’t used to scrubbing at hard-to-clean stains.

“That could work,” she says instead, smiling gratefully.

“Cool,” Faith says, looking excited. Buffy laughs and rolls her shoulders back, trying to relax. “So there you are—a slayer. One girl in all the world and all that junk…at least you were back when you first met Angel, the tortured vampire hunk with a soul. You guys instantly feel a connection, what with bein’ all unique and everything. How am I doing so far?”

“A little too good,” Buffy says. “Have you been gossiping with Willow and Xander?”

“Hey, it ain’t my fault your friends have lips looser than I am.”

Buffy laughs despite herself. “God, Faith.”

“What? We’re being open and honest here, right? That starts on the inside, B.”

“Sure.”

“So anyway, you got this killer connection, and you’d be a fool not to act on it. You sleep with him. He turns evil.”

“It sounds so simple when you put it like that,” Buffy says, frowning.

“Well, how would _you_ put it?”

Buffy sighs, wishing she hadn’t interjected. But it’s jarring, hearing several months of pain and anguish and guilt and terror condensed into two simple sentences: _You sleep with him. He turns evil._

“I guess something more along the lines of: you throw your responsibility to the world under the Hormone Bus, endanger all your friends—hell, endanger the entire world—get your Watcher’s hunny killed, and put yourself in a position where you have to kill the one person who’d be able to understand. He’s sentenced to death because you shirked responsibility.”

It takes Buffy a second to realize Faith’s stopped walking alongside her.

“Where did I lose you?” she asks, pacing back to her.

Faith shakes her head, and her loose curls bounce around her shoulders. “You actually believe all that shit?”

Buffy takes an involuntary step back at the anger in Faith’s voice. “I…Yeah, I do.”

“That’s a load of horseshit, B.”

Buffy starts stomping away. “Great, so glad we decided to talk about this, but I think share time’s over now.”

Faith charges after her, the tip of her sword dragging in the snow. “Fine, go on playin’ the victim and the monster in your little sob story if ya want—as long as it’s all about you, right?”

Buffy emits a strangled noise somewhere between a shout of surprise and an angry scoff.

“All I’m sayin’ is,” Faith continues, “it takes two to tango. The vamp gets an equal share of the blame. No…more than, because it did the actual killing.”

“No soul, no choice…no real agency.”

“More horseshit,” Faith says, gaining the lead and stepping into Buffy’s path. She nearly walks right into her. “Angel had a soul and a choice when you guys decided to get tangled in the bedsheets, right?”

Buffy stares her down, nostrils flared and fists clenched at her sides. Faith stares back, unwavering, and cocks a haughty eyebrow.

Before Buffy can decide if she’s going to shove Faith out of her way, thus igniting the highly flammable tension omnipresent between them, they hear the crunching footsteps of something approaching. Their heads snap around in unison, just in time to see a pack of three vampires descending on them.

Instinct kicks in, diverting Buffy’s attention away from Faith. She slides a stake out of her jacket sleeve and crosses her forearms in front of her face just in time to deflect a punch, grabbing onto the vamp’s wrist and using the momentum from the swing to flip him onto his back. Then she turns to the other vampire attacking her and knocks away a kick aimed at her stomach. After a swift punch to the nose of vamp two, she spins and kicks the just-standing vamp one, sending it flying several yards.

Buffy uses the opportunity to knock out vampire two and knees her in the stomach. Once she’s keeled over, she grabs onto a handful of hair, yanks it into an upright position, and stakes it in the chest.

“Need a hand!” Faith calls out, her voice ringing through the empty cemetery, and Buffy’s head snaps around in time to see Faith getting her legs kicked out from under her.

The swirl of snow that shoots into the air when her body hits the ground makes it hard for Buffy to make out what happens next. “Hang in there…coming!”

She turns back to her vampire number one, but she’s a little late. He tackles her to the ground, and they roll a couple yards, snow sliding into Buffy’s shirt and stinging the skin of her back.

Thankfully, she manages to get one of her hands around his throat and pin him. As he sinks deeper into the snow, struggling against Buffy’s hold on him, she stakes him clean through the heart.

By the time she pops up onto her feet, Faith’s on her knees and raising her sword high above her head. She pauses there for a second, savoring the moment, and the dangerous glint in her eyes makes Buffy’s stomach swoop with confusing excitement. Then the blade of the sword slices through the air, beheading the vampire laid out on its back.

“Now I get why people are always complaining about the snow,” Buffy says, wriggling uncomfortably as melting ice slides lower down her shirt. She holds her hand out to Faith, helping her up to her feet.

“This is nothin’. You should see Boston winters,” Faith says, shaking out her hair. Some of the tiny crystals remain, clinging to her dark locks and refracting moonlight.

_Then again, maybe snow has its charms_ , Buffy thinks.

“Still,” she says out loud. “Mild or not, I think I prefer to battle the forces of darkness in the dry heat.”

Faith hums in affirmation, and the last wisp of Angel-related anger is snuffed out. Buffy’s had enough aggression for the night, anyway.

“I think hot showers are in order,” she says.

“I’ll have to settle for not-totally-fucking-frigid,” Faith says, falling into step next to her.

Buffy’s mind jumps to Faith’s grimy motel shower, and she frowns.

“You should spend the night at my place again.” The words are out of her mouth before she has a chance to think about them.

“Hey, if you’re offering, I ain’t gonna argue.”

“I’m offering,” Buffy confirms.

Faith flashes her a pleased smile that makes her knees go a little wobbly.

###

Buffy nearly squeaks when a soft knock at her door jars her out of her thoughts. She hops off her bed instantly and cracks open the door to find Faith wrapped in a towel and looking sheepish.

“I don’t, um…you got some clothes I could wear?”

“Oh, right,” Buffy says, feeling stupid for not thinking about that when she’d shown Faith where to put the snow-soaked clothes she’d borrowed from Joyce. The stupidity flooding her brain only doubles when Faith steps fully into the room, giving Buffy a dripping wet eyeful.

“So, um, yeah,” she says—stupid, stupid, stupid—and turns to her dresser. She pulls out fleece, zebra-print pajama bottoms and a simple black tank top.

Faith raises one, judgmental eyebrow at the pants. “You really got a thing for animal print, huh?”

Buffy makes a non-committal noise and jumps toward the door. “You feel like hot chocolate? I feel like hot chocolate. I’ll go make some, bring us up a couple mugs.”

Faith shrugs easily. “Cool.”

When Buffy gets back to the room, a mug gripped in each hand, she finds Faith dressed and staring at her cork board full of pictures.

“Hey,” she says softly, trying not to scare her.

Faith turns with a grin on her face and accepts the hot chocolate Buffy offers her. The tank top Buffy gave her is a little too small—perfect for her own petite booblessness, but not so much for the buxom Faith—and it rides high on Faith’s stomach, barely falling past her belly button.

To stop herself from staring, Buffy takes a sip of her drink and settles back on her bed.

Faith joins her, perching on the edge. “So.”

“So…?”

“You still owe me a story.”

Buffy ducks her head. “Right.”

“So you had to kill your man,” Faith says, prompting her when she stays silent for several minutes. “That’s some soap opera shit right there.”

With a humorless laugh, Buffy relaxes back into her headboard. “You don’t even know.”

“I’m trying to,” Faith points out.

Buffy nods, swallows down a gulp of hot chocolate, and then says, “When he came back it was like…I was being given a chance to do things over. It felt like a miracle, a huge gift from the universe.”

“But?” Faith asks, reading the hesitation in Buffy’s voice.

“But,” Buffy says, holding Faith’s eye contact, “even though it felt like our connection was still there, strong as ever…I couldn’t go back. I can’t go back. I’m different after everything that happened between us.”

“You still care about him, though” Faith says, and is Buffy imagining the edge of jealousy in her voice?

“Yeah, and that’s what got me into the Christmas Eve mess.”

Faith snaps to attention. This had been the part she was waiting for, after all. “Kickin’ demon butt?”

“More like kicking Angel’s own butt to stop him from dusting himself.”

“Damn.”

“Mm-hmm,” Buffy agrees. “See, none of us are sure why exactly Angel was ejected from the hell dimension he was in, expect that now it seems like there are primal forces that want to use him like a pawn…for what, we don’t know. Giles is gonna do some more research.”

“This story is a real downer. And a major letdown. I was hopin’ for some gore.”

“When aren’t you?” Buffy asks.

Faith shrugs, allowing this.

“Anyway, some major evil—something that calls itself The First, actually—was messing with his mind. And he was gonna kill himself to make it stop.” Buffy finishes, staring out her dark window without seeing anything.

“So you stopped him.”

“I guess,” Buffy says, remembering the unsteady way they’d left things.

They sit in silence for several minutes. Finally, Faith stands. “Well, guess I’d better get to my couch.”

“Or…,” Buffy says. “You could sleep here. The bed’s big enough.”

She tells herself she’s offering because she doesn’t want to be alone with her thoughts—and that’s definitely true—but she’s not sure that’s the whole truth.

“Okay.”

They both get under the covers, and Buffy turns off her bedside lamp. She’s almost fallen asleep by the time Faith speaks again.

“Hey…B?”

“Hmm?”

“Thanks for today. It’s, uh, the best Christmas I’ve had in a long-ass time.”

Buffy smiles to herself in the darkness. “Goodnight, Faith. Merry Christmas.”

Again, she’s nearly drifted off by the time Faith answers, though she thinks that’s the point.

“Yeah, I guess it was.”


End file.
